Hello,
my name is Nicola Ciaramella.
Right
now, I'm a student at Brock University who’s in their last undergrad year of
the Concurrent Education program.
I would like to start my blog off by explaining what education is to me. For me, education is a complex word to summarize, as
I believe it holds a tremendous about of value.
The overall context of education is more than just the act of learning but the start of a
creative approach to learning about oneself.
I
would also like to mention that I am looking forward to EDUC 4P19 and the
opportunity to experience this class further through the blogging platform.
Thank
you.
-Nicola
Nicola,
ReplyDeleteI appreciated reading your blog and learning more about effective teaching. While reading your blog, I found myself comparing the information I read, to my life as a student for the last 17 years. I discovered that although I strongly believe in a constructivist’s classroom, my entire schooling has mostly been based around the traditional classroom. Why do you think this is? If we have all this information about how effective a constructivist classroom is, then why do we still see traditional classroom settings today? I find it interesting that we can learn about the benefits of being an effective teacher and the strategies behind it, however, if we can’t execute them, are they really that effective? It was nice to see all the sources you used to back up your information. Great work, and I look forward to hearing from you soon!
EJD
Nicola,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I really like your division of sections- it is very organized and easy to follow. I also like how your post in focused on education students specifically who are learning to be teachers rather than those who are actually established teachers. It is essential that we are thinking about, and trying to implement these things now.
I think it’s very significant that you referred to teaching as a process- this is very hard to remember. Often both as students and teachers, we want immediate results- but truly education does not work this way, if it is deep and long-term learning we seek.
As for the list of characteristics of effective teaching that you’ve provided, I would like to know: Which ones do you agree with? Disagree with? Are there any that you would add? Furthermore you mentioned the issue of “how to properly group students together that will benefit their learning” How do we do this effectively? I remember in school, teachers would often group together higher- and lower-achieving students (an education reading also suggested this as it encourages participation) but this can be problematic as the higher-achieving student often ends up doing all the work. What are your thoughts on this?
Lastly, I have to agree that perhaps a combination of both traditional and modern-day practices would prove to be the most effective. Hopefully we can move and work towards this in the future.
Looking to reading more from you,
Miss Colella